


The Love You Can Give

by likehandlingroses



Series: Awfully Sweet [4]
Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Abuse, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Era, Childhood Memories, Childhood Trauma, Estrangement, Found Family, Gen, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Terminal Illnesses, The Barrow Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:14:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22152346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likehandlingroses/pseuds/likehandlingroses
Summary: Thomas's mother taught him to take what's his.But what does that mean for a man like him, especially when it comes to family?
Relationships: Thomas Barrow & George Crawley, Thomas Barrow & Marigold Crawley, Thomas Barrow & Sybbie Branson, Thomas Barrow/Richard Ellis
Series: Awfully Sweet [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1569157
Comments: 62
Kudos: 355





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This started as me wanting to write Thomas first meeting Sybbie, and quickly turned into an exploration of why that would mean so much to him, based on his estrangement from his own family...then THAT turned into me wanting to explore what happens after that--both in canon and beyond. 
> 
> So this will be three parts, now, and I hope you enjoy them! I'm super excited about what this one opened up in terms of Thomas's character for me. 
> 
> Also, a note on the tags: Richard will play a major role by the third part, so that's why he's tagged! It WILL be a shippy story in due time, I pinky promise!
> 
> Knowing the other stories in the Awfully Sweet series might be nice, but it's by no means required!
> 
> Title is from The Sound of Music, “Climb Ev’ry Mountain”—the song everyone skips, but if you listen to the Audra McDonald version, it’ll change your life!

**1897**

Thomas stood on his toes, eyeing the bedroom’s newest occupant, who was perched on the edge of the dresser. 

Maggie called the doll “Lilac” after the bushes in the yard, though Lilac the Doll would be lucky if she ever saw the bushes...or the trees or the sky or anything apart from the bare wall she’d been staring at since Christmas. 

Maggie had taken her down from her perch only three times, mostly to fuss over her hair and fix her dress (what she was fixing, Thomas didn’t know).

What was the point of such a toy? Thomas stood taller on the tips of his toes, his eyes narrowed, one hand reaching up to bat the doll closer...closer...she tumbled into his hands, her blue glass eyes unchanging. 

Thomas poked at her face—cool and hard and placid, even across the pink of her cheeks. But her body was soft, like his stuffed rabbit (his _old_ stuffed rabbit, from when he was a baby). Except her head didn’t flop—it stayed heavy in the crook of his elbow as he laid her out in his arms. 

Thomas held her just so, letting the weight of her head rest against his right arm, as his left wrapped about her, squeezing her just a little before looking back down into her face. She looked happier than before...and why wouldn’t she be? Finally being _held,_ after sitting on a shelf day in and day out? 

_That’s what it’s for_ , he thought, the idea blazing across his mind before Maggie’s voice cut through the room. 

“Put her _down!_ _”_ she shrieked. 

“I just want to hold it!”

“No! You’ll ruin her!”

Mummy had said Maggie had better learn to ask nicely, or she’d get nothing at all...Thomas darted past her, the doll gripped tightly in his arms. He didn’t dare run as fast as he might have, with the doll in hand, and Maggie caught him up in the sitting room. She paced in front of him, not quite daring to make a stab at taking the doll back, for fear of disaster. Thomas didn’t attempt another daring escape for much the same reason.

“Thomas…” Maggie growled. They both heard humming from the kitchen, but Maggie yelled first: 

_“Mum!”_

She stepped closer, emboldened by the prospect of another ally. Thomas jerked the doll away, keeping it cradled in his arms. 

“I share _my_ toys!”

“I don’t want to play with your stupid baby toys!”

“You do _all_ the time!”

He saw Mummy coming before Maggie did. Her hands were only just finishing with fixing her hair as she approached. She fixed it about three hundred times a day, though Thomas didn’t see what difference it made. She was always the prettiest lady in the world. 

“What’s all this?” she said, hardly above a murmur, wincing as the shrill retelling of two competing stories began. 

Thomas knew he’d win—he always won, when it was Mummy. Maggie tried too hard—there she went, hanging off of Mummy’s arm, it would _never_ work...Mummy wanted two feet on the ground, chin up. 

They were Finches, too, she always said. Not just _Barrows._ And Finches fought their corners. 

To his dismay, the ruling didn’t go in his favor. Worse still, she waved away his attempts at any appeal, one hand reaching to her right temple. 

“Thomas, please—”

“—but—”

“I’ve a headache coming on, lovey, all right?” she said. “Please just let your sister have it back.”

Maggie snatched the doll before he could make a gift of it, and Thomas, still reeling, tripped after his mother back into the kitchen. 

“But I wasn’t gonna break it!” he insisted, grabbing onto the hand she noncommittally held out to him, and squeezing it in both of his own. “I wasn’t!”

“I know you weren’t,” she said, slowing her pace. And Thomas knew that meant he was dragging his feet, which wouldn’t do. Whatever had happened with the doll, he knew how to walk side-by-side with his mother. 

It was something that didn’t need to be taught, only thought on every once in a while. 

“The thing is, Thomas, it’s her special toy,” she continued. “So she’s going to fuss over it, whether we like it or not.”

Which didn’t seem quite fair, but Thomas knew when he’d been beaten. 

There was, however, something else he might try...

“I want a baby doll…” he said ten minutes later, when Mummy was halfway through dicing an onion and humming again. 

She nodded, in a way that told him she’d already guessed. Mummy usually did, though Thomas had found that it didn’t hurt to check. 

Two weeks later, Daddy stared incredulously down at “Penny”—who had green glass eyes and dark brown hair, and who Thomas thought was much softer than Lilac had been anyway. Maggie kept on about how she wasn’t a _new_ doll, but Thomas didn’t see what it mattered. _He_ didn’t care if her dress was stained, or one of her eyes were cracked. 

She lay in his arms just the same, and that was the main thing. 

“What’s that, then?” Daddy asked, looking about the table for an explanation regarding the newest family addition. 

“She’s mine,” Thomas said, as that seemed to be the question Daddy was really asking.

“He wanted to be like his sister,” Mummy said, helping Thomas with the gravy boat. 

Daddy gave a sort of grunt, which made Mummy’s head snap up sharp. Thomas watched the gravy make a dangerous wave that lapped at the edge of the boat still in her hand. 

“I think it’s sweet,” she said, smile too tight. “And I spent a nice and quiet afternoon for the first time in I don’t know how long, so I don’t want to hear a word against it.” 

“Did I say anything against it?” Daddy stabbed at his potatoes. “Just don’t know what he’s supposed to do with it...”

The boat made just a little too much noise landing on the table. 

“Why don’t you ask him?” she said. “He can talk for himself...Thomas: why’d you want a baby doll? What do you do with it?”

Thomas blinked in the face of his father’s stare. It felt difficult to explain, somehow, especially to his father, who always wanted to be _doing_ something, making something...finding a problem so he could mend it. 

He wouldn’t understand at all, Thomas didn’t think. Not even if he tried his hardest (and Thomas knew he _did_ try, usually). 

He looked up at Mummy, who had tapped his chin with her hand. 

“Well?” she murmured, eyes locked with his. And that meant it was time to be braver than he felt inside. 

“You have to take care of it because it’s a baby.”

Mummy looked at Daddy with her chin up, so Thomas didn’t have to. 

“There you are.”

* * *

  
  


_June 15, 1910_

_Thomas,_

_Since you asked my advice: I suppose you’d better take the offered position in Yorkshire-—it seems that’s the natural step in service. A bigger house, a higher position. You’d know better than I—the nearest person in service when we were growing up was Uncle George, and we hardly saw him above once a year._

_I suppose it’ll be a change in scenery. I can’t think you’ll mind that._

_I’m not sure what else there’d be to meet about in regards to it all. I don’t have much time, in any case, what with Henry cutting his first teeth. Besides, I’d hate to make Peter cross, with the baby already keeping us up all hours._

_Do let me know if your address changes._

_Your sister,_

_Margaret Hiller_

Thomas kept the letter tucked in the top left drawer of his dresser at Downton for three weeks, pulling it out each evening, waiting for it to tell him if there was any response that would return the sting he wanted. The same sting he felt each time he read the lines—light and even and cool to the touch. 

He knew from the start what the answer would be, that his investigation would come to nothing but reopening his own wounds...but he took a savage pleasure in inventing a version of his sister who might be affected by something—anything—he did. 

If that version had ever existed, she was gone now. 

Still, he searched for her. Perhaps he’d have kept searching forever, had one of the maids—Anna—not reminded him forcefully that he’d never been good at keeping such searching to himself.

“I remember feeling so strange after taking my first job far away from family,” she said to him over breakfast, entirely unprompted. 

“That’s interesting,” Thomas said flatly, not looking up from his toast. The last thing he wanted was to be the homesick, babied footman. Apart from the indignity of it all, he _wasn’t_ homesick. Not in the way anyone could be expected to understand.

Anna blinked, her brow furrowing, but Thomas had seen from the start that she wouldn’t be easily deterred. She seemed kind enough, but kind people could cause no end of trouble, if not kept in check. 

“Do you write much to people back home?”

“Some,” he lied, supplementing it with a version of the truth. “But not so much as to bother them...they’ve got their own lives, don’t they? Dad still works, sister’s got a baby now…”

He bit forcefully into his toast. A baby, with that joyless dullard...Thomas supposed he should be glad of the excuse not to have to sit in their shabby little house, wearing himself out trying to make conversation. 

“What do they care about dinner parties and silver polish?” he said, flashing a smile that faded before it set. It would do for keeping Anna away from any fences she might be tempted to peer over…

“A baby? Oh, that’s always nice!” 

Thomas held back a sigh.

“Don’t see why.” The bitterness crept in his voice—too much to be safe—but after making such a start, he didn’t have a choice but to try and patch things up. 

“I only mean: they don’t do much, do they?” he continued. “Except spend money our lot don’t have...” 

That earned him a few guilty smiles, though Anna’s wasn’t one of them. 

“Still, they are sweet,” she said, looking around the table for encouragement in the face of Thomas’s tepid interest. 

He shrugged. “I’ll take your word for it.” 

He threw Margaret's letter out before supper that evening—but not before tearing it in two, surgically down the seam, extracting what pleasure he could from his careful dismantling of Maggie’s sloping hand.

It was the last bit of good the bloody thing was going to give him.

* * *

**1914**

_They aren’t mine, they aren’t. They aren’t they aren’t they aren’t._ Over and over, until he could breathe properly again, until his hands stopped shaking long enough for him to light his cigarette. The air was cool, but not quite cool enough to soothe the heat that had risen in his cheeks. 

_They aren’t mine, and I don’t want them._

He winced, hoping William’s hand hurt as badly as his did…

“You’re a fool, you know that?”

Thomas jumped at O’Brien’s approach. Despite the bite in her words, the glint Thomas was used to seeing in her eyes was nowhere to be found. Thomas supposed he didn’t blame her--if anyone had a right to be shaken up about Her Ladyship, it was her. Being there when it happened...even he knew that was another matter entirely. 

“For what?” he said, leaning back against the wall. She didn’t join him. “Giving William a reason to limp on another day? Never seen such a fire under the bloke...didn’t know he had it in him, to tell you the truth.”

She stared at the cigarette he held out to her, finally taking it as he began to pull back. He grinned, though she looked as far from amused as he’d ever seen her. 

“Everyone has it in them when it comes to something or other…” she said. “And you should have known that’d be it.” 

Which was fair enough. Thomas was beginning to feel the air on his cheeks again, and with the cool down came a sense of concession. Not quite guilt, he couldn’t give them that...but a sense of his own missteps. 

There was fair, and there wasn’t fair. And he’d not played it fair. 

“I shouldn’t have brought up his mum, I know it…” he admitted. “But the way they were carrying on...and if it were one of us, they’d never give it a—”

“—oh, stop talking like you care about that,” O’Brien snapped. Something in Thomas’s stomach twisted. “Not after the way you just went on. You wanted to be hateful, that’s all it was.”

“Oh, I’m hateful, am I? Who was the one talking so big about getting her back?”

And there was the glint—or something like it, only more terrible and terrified. 

“Don’t ever say that again.” 

Thomas scanned her face, his smile diminishing. It couldn’t _mean_ anything, except maybe that she was superstitious, felt torn up about wishing Her Ladyship ill before the accident...but it made him feel eerie all the same. 

It really _was_ a dreadful thing to have happened. 

“There’s a nerve…” he muttered. “Suppose you’ll be glad I’m leaving along with the rest, then?”

The glint was gone again. “ _Are_ you leaving?”

“I will be, one way or another. You think I’m gonna sit here and wait for them to give me the sack?”

After today, Mr. Carson would do it with a skip in his step.

O’Brien nodded, shuffling to her place on the wall beside him. 

“I won’t be glad. I’ll say that much.” She tapped the ash from her cigarette. “I might even be sorry, if you can stomach that…”

“You’d be the first…” Thomas drawled. 

_They aren’t mine._

But this came close. Having someone be sorry to see him go...that was something new, not to be scoffed at.

The only person who’d ever had any interest in _missing_ him was his mother, and she’d gone and made him miss her first.

Actually, Mr. Henderson made him miss her first, by making such a fuss about Thomas’s half days that he’d stopped asking by the end of it…

None of them knew that story, not even Miss O’Brien. They didn’t know him. They weren’t _his,_ and so they could have no idea how hateful he was. Let alone why. 

He lifted his chin, swallowing back a sense of shame that had nothing to do with Her Ladyship and only a little bit to do with William. 

“I meant what I said.” 

“Dare I ask about what?”

He tapped out his cigarette against the wall. 

There was fair and there wasn’t fair. 

“I’m sorry about what happened to her.”

The lines around O’Brien’s mouth softened. 

“So am I.”

* * *

**1918**

“You ran off quickly when Lieutenant Bolton pulled out his picture of Lucy.” 

Lady Sybil—Nurse Crawley, now—settled down next to him in the usual place, just next to a wide window in one of the sitting rooms. Her favorite view at Downton, she said; Thomas had known that since about 1911, but there was something about being told such details by the person in question. 

He still couldn’t quite believe it: Sybil _told_ him things about herself—things he knew and things he’d never have guessed. What’s more, he was slowly learning to do the same. 

It was easier, now that she knew the main thing. The thing that sent nearly everyone on edge, that changed who he was in their eyes (and always in the most hideous ways). How gently she’d guessed, how comfortably she slipped him the truth of her knowledge…people didn’t do that, but she _had._

How could he hold back from her after that? 

“I’ve seen it before,” he said with a smile. 

She laughed. “I think we’ve all seen it by now, Sergeant. He’s very proud of her.” 

And of course, Lieutenant Bolton had every right to be. A healthy little girl, in the midst of all the tragedy around them...Thomas supposed nothing could be nicer than having such a thought to look back on. 

He’d always have to _suppose_ , wouldn’t he?

“I know, but the way he carries on about it…there’s only so many ways you can hold a photograph.”

He dared a glance at Sybil, whose face looked more thoughtful than any of the things he’d feared. 

“He must love her very much.” 

“Well, I’m glad for him…” Thomas looked out the window. “But it doesn’t mean much to the rest of us.”

He watched the people coming and going from the house, while Sybil watched him. And if anyone else had gotten it in their heads to try and sort through him, he’d have set them straight...but Sybil was different, and he didn’t mind it so much. 

“You remember what happened just before the war? When my mother lost her baby?”

Thomas tensed about the shoulders...he knew more about what happened than any living person besides one...and he’d sworn to O’Brien keep it that way. 

“I do,” he managed. “We were all sorry for it.”

Which wasn’t a lie, _exactly._

“Well, one of my friends in London, Emma Pierce, had her son about three weeks after, and I felt so ugly inside about it. I _wanted_ to be happy for her, but I couldn’t manage it.”

Thomas could guess what she was getting at, but as usual, she was being generous in her comparisons between them. For one thing, Thomas was almost certain no one but Sybil herself had ever guessed she’d felt “ugly inside” about anything. The same could never be said of him. 

For another, she’d had every reason to expect a brother where there suddenly, tragically, wasn’t one. Thomas had known for years what his prospects were...time enough to get used to the idea, at least well enough to stop him from visibly resenting every man with a real life. 

“You were grieving.”

“Not a person,” she said. “I don’t even know what it would be like to have any brother at all, let alone _that_ brother. It was all potential—he was exactly what I wanted in my own mind, and of course it would never have been like that if he’d really come into the world. He was a wish, that’s all.”

Thomas stared back out the window. 

“Still...we have to have those, don’t we?”

“Absolutely. And then we get to choose how they come true,” she said, so warmly that Thomas turned back towards her. “Can I tell you something silly? Only you can’t tell anyone.”

Thomas grinned. “I _wouldn’t,_ Nurse Crawley.” 

“When I first started at the hospital, I sometimes pretended that the patients were my brother. Not in every respect—”

“—I should think _not_ —”

“—but certain things,” she laughed. “Like Lieutenant Starnes—you never met him, but he had _such_ a laugh. It always made me smile. And I thought, well, maybe my brother would have laughed like that at my jokes. And it made me want to make him laugh more often.”

Thomas raised an eyebrow. “Because a part of you believed he was family.”

“Because I knew he was realer than the person I was missing.” She leaned forward, looking at him intently. “That all the things I was missing would mean so much more if I stopped _wishing_ I could do them with a person who didn’t exist...and started doing them with someone who _does_ exist.”

Which sounded nice and clever and wonderfully sincere—all things Thomas had learned to admire in Sybil—but he didn’t see how it helped someone like him, who wasn’t as wonderfully _anything_ as Sybil was. 

He affected a teasing smile, the sort she understood without taking offense. 

“Is that the moral to your story?”

She laughed. “Yes, it is.” 

“Well, I’ll keep it in my back pocket, Nurse Crawley.”

He’d be surprised if anything came of it, but he owed her the favor of trying. 

* * *

**1920**

Thomas stood in the doorway of the newly occupied nursery, heart pounding in his chest. The baby’s screaming had gotten louder since he’d first heard it, and the nurse was still nowhere to be found. 

He’d thought nothing of her request to keep an eye on things while she popped downstairs—what trouble could a baby get herself into, after all? 

From the sound of it, quite a lot.

_You have to go in._

_And do what, exactly?_

The next wail thrust him into the room and over to the crib. He peered down breathlessly at the beet-red infant, who looked—to his eyes—completely fine. (And of course she did, what had he expected? A shoulder torn through by bullets? The poor thing was hungry or needed to be changed, and what on _earth_ was he supposed to do about that?)

She was tired of screaming, taking a few panting breaths before starting up again. 

And she didn’t know, did she? That she didn’t have to bother, that the nurse would be back and everything would be right again soon enough? 

“Oh, now…” he murmured, stepping forward. And perhaps it would make a difference, knowing someone was there, whether he could help or not…

Her head was warm and downy, and Thomas’s breath hitched in his throat. Her shrieks turned to furious sobs at his touch. _Hurry up_ , she seemed to say—with what, Thomas didn’t know. But she knew he was there, and now she expected something of him. 

Maybe he could guess what it was, he thought, his chest swelling with a kind of pride at being trusted by the little thing...and after all, maybe he could manage—

“Mr. Barrow?”

Thomas whirled on his heel, coming face-to-face with Anna. 

“The nurse went down,” he said breathlessly. “I...well, she was crying, that’s why I came in.”

As if Anna would otherwise accuse him of being the culprit...he wouldn’t put it past some of them, but Anna would know better without his stammering. 

Sure enough, she smiled as she strode over to his side. 

“Has she got a wet nappy?” 

“I dunno.” Thomas budged up to the head of the crib to make room. Anna made a face that had too much _‘of course you don’t’_ for his liking. 

“Here,” she whispered, picking Sybbie up with an ease he envied. Where did she learn it all? 

“Oh, it’s not so bad as that…” she cooed. “It isn’t so bad...she’s dry, anyway. Maybe she’s just spooked.”

“By what?”

Anna was not-quite bouncing, not-quite rocking Sybbie—which seemed to be just the thing, as Sybbie’s sobs had turned listless. Thomas wished he knew the trick of it. 

“What would you be spooked of, if you didn’t know what anything was, and could hardly move besides?” she asked, grinning at Thomas. 

She had a point.

“I didn’t realize how small they were,” he murmured, looking down at Sybbie’s tiny fists. One of them opened up at Anna’s prompting, clasping her index finger tight. Thomas didn’t know when he’d last felt so envious. 

“Lady Mary says the eclampsia made her smaller.”

Thomas frowned. _“How?”_

Anna shrugged. “I don’t know, do I?”

“But she’ll be all right?”

“They’re as sure as they are with any baby.” Sybbie’s sobs had dissipated—she stared at Anna with wide, slowly blinking eyes. 

“There, now…” Anna whispered. “She’s a sweet little thing…”

“She is.”

If he’d had a mind to give Anna more than a passing glance, the sad, puzzled look on her face might have rankled. 

“Do you want to see her?”

Thomas swallowed. He’d never wanted anything more, but—

“I wouldn’t know the first thing.”

She cocked her head to the side, biting back a smile. 

“About carrying something delicate?”

Thomas ducked his head, his cheeks growing hot. 

“All right, then…”

“She’s not a hot potato…” Anna said, smiling at the ginger way he held out his arms. “Just be sure to keep her head up.”

 _Yes, yes, I know that much at least_...but nothing came out of his mouth. Not even air, for a moment or two, as she settled in his arms. 

“Oh,” he finally breathed, as Sybbie’s eyes locked on his. “Hello… _hello.”_


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has some Content Warnings (reference to animal violence, physical abuse, a shade more homophobia than usual, and some trauma responses). None of them are covered in a way that warrants a rating escalation, but do keep them in mind!
> 
> A section of it also takes place during Season 5, when Thomas is very ill due to his conversion therapy--though the reason for his illness isn't explored in any detail.

**1901**

_That’s enough tears for one day_ , his father said—and though his voice had been clear and even, there was a note of muted anger in it that made Thomas want to weep all the harder. 

_Did you see any of the other lads carrying on that way? Don’t it embarrass you, making a scene like that? And you coming up on ten years...my old man would’ve smacked it right out of me…_

He said that all the time, as if to shock. It never worked, for though he wasn’t in the habit of smacking his children, he was pretty well practiced in smacking just about everything else. 

Especially when Thomas was around. 

His hand slapped the work bench, the same spot every time. It was a wonder a hand print couldn’t be found embedded in the wood. 

“If you don’t quit that!” he snarled, in reference to Thomas’s continued sniffing. He’d begged off of watching him work, just this once. But his father thought rolled-up sleeves and concentration were a cure for most anything. 

Thomas sat straighter, still wiping his eyes. “This is stupid!”

His father turned red about the ears. 

“Then go on, then!” As if he hadn’t forced Thomas to be there in the first place. “Don’t do me any favors, sitting here howling…”

But now that he was being urged to leave, Thomas felt as if it’d be giving something up, to go. Something that might not be offered again. He kicked his right foot out under the table, taking a ragged breath through his nose. 

The time’d pass either way...

“Come, now…” His father’s voice was almost soft. “There wasn’t anything to be done about it, was there?” 

Before Thomas could decide if it was worth anything to protest, Mum poked her head through the door.

“Quite a bit of shouting, for a lesson…” Her eyes landed on Thomas, who was still swallowing back the last of his tears, and she stepped into the room properly. 

“What’s the matter, then?” she asked, crossing her arms in front of her chest even as she tried on a smile. “Are you quarreling over which bit goes in next?”

His father looked at Thomas, who stared at his shoes.

He couldn’t tell the story without crying again. Not to Mum. 

“The Carrick’s dog had puppies,” his father finally said, after clearing his throat. 

_“Again?”_

“That’s what I said.” His father almost smiled. “So a group of ‘em got to checking in on the way back from school—will you stop shuffling your feet? The boy who sits next to you must have a time trying to remember a thing—anyway, he took a shine to the runt. More’n his mother did…”

He laughed, and Thomas felt his stomach twist.

“It’s not funny!”

His father sighed, looking at Mum imploringly. “The lad thinks someone else should’ve taken to being a dog’s nursemaid.”

Which of course was the stupidest, silliest way to say what Thomas had meant. He always picked that way, and Thomas didn’t know if it was because his father only thought stupid and silly things, or if it was because he thought _Thomas_ only thought stupid and silly things. 

“I only said, someone else could feed her if they _tried_ …”

 _“Who_ could?” And it was a mistake to re-argue anything with his father, for the same words grew more cutting with each go ‘round. “Mrs. Carrick’s got all sorts to do without taking care of a pup besides.”

Thomas looked at Mum, whose face was set, though her eyes were fixed on the far wall, where a few of his father’s favorite clocks hung. She was going to let Thomas finish it himself, and that meant he _could_ , if he wanted. 

The thought resolved him. 

“You take care of clocks when they’re sick, and they aren’t even alive!”

It worked—though his father’s brow furrowed, eyes narrowing, the sharpness in his voice was gone as he shuffled for a new retort. 

“And sometimes a clock can’t be fixed, can it?”

Thomas stood from his seat. “But you don’t _kill_ it!”

That worked a little too well. His father fell silent, but Thomas felt his tears coming back, and with those tears came Mum’s voice. 

“God...he didn’t _watch_ it?” she asked, in a hushed, accusatory tone.

“It wasn’t _my_ doing!” His father’d been entirely caught off guard at being the subject of inquiry. He fidgeted in his chair, fingers twitching. “He was dawdling back home and stopped off to see ‘em with his friends, like I said. Suppose Mr. Carrick thinks Davey should know the facts of life. And maybe he’s right...there’s no reason for a boy his age to carry on so.”

Thomas didn’t dare look at either of them. Both of them glaring at each other over something that was his doing...something that Thomas never thought was worth fussing over, but they _always_ did. 

“Mr. Carrick’s a brute,” Mum snapped. “I’ve always said so. Showing little boys that sort of thing—”

“—I’m not a little boy!” Thomas said frantically, more to stop his father from saying it first (though, of course, he _wasn’t_ a little boy, and she should know better than to say so. He could manage almost everything, now, except cooking, and that’d be fixed once he got tall enough to reach the top cabinets). 

“Of course you aren’t, darling.” She held her hand out to him anyway, with a muttered proclamation that he’d had _quite_ enough lessons for one day. He took it in his own, squeezing it tight so it’d get warm faster. Mum hated having cold hands...

“Just breathe,” she whispered as she led him to the kitchen. “In first...all right? Good boy...”

He wondered how she’d found out that breathing helped. It took so long to work, he couldn’t think how she’d stumbled on the solution. 

But it _did_ work, almost always, and by the time they reached the kitchen, Thomas’s tears had stopped, and Mum’s hand was warm. 

Maggie looked up from her stirring with a frown. “What’s wrong with _him,_ then?” 

Mum pursed her lips, but said nothing, shooing her to the other side of the counter-top, where the potatoes sat, waiting to be scrubbed. 

“You think you can manage the carrots?” she said, smiling down at Thomas as she let go of his hand. “Nice and neat like you do?”

She turned to the pantry at Thomas’s eager nod, her hand brushing up against a folded piece of paper on the counter-top. 

All three pairs of eyes landed on the note—Maggie’s were wide, and a flush had come over her cheeks. 

“What’s that you’ve got there?” 

“Nothing!” Maggie swiped for the note, but not before Mum snatched it up. “Mum!”

She made a show of being angry, but Thomas supposed she liked having a secret too much to really keep it. 

Anyway, all her secrets were about the same thing...

Mum clicked her tongue while scanning the note. “The Hiller boy _again?”_

Thomas looked up. _One_ part of that was new, anyway. 

_“Andrew?”_ he said, shifting to Mum’s side.

“No, Peter, of course!” Maggie said, nose in the air. “What would I want with the little one?”

“What would you want with the big one?” he retorted. As if Andrew Hiller weren’t already twice as clever as any of the boys _her_ age…

Maggie held her hand out for the note, and Mum must have found nothing dangerous in it, for she handed it back without another word—though the corners of her mouth were twitching.

“You say the stupidest things sometimes,” Maggie muttered under her breath before tearing off into the other room. 

“I’m not stupid…” Thomas grumbled uselessly. Not stupid enough to like Peter Hiller, anyway...

“She’s just in a mood, don’t mind her,” Mum said, fetching down a cutting board for him. 

“She doesn’t really fancy him, does she?” Thomas asked. “Andrew says Peter’s the nastiest, meanest brother in the whole world.”

The sort of nasty that made Andrew all shaking and nervous when Peter was around. And no wonder—Andrew had shown him what came of coming too close, and it wasn’t pretty. 

_You should hit him back,_ Thomas had said. _I’ll hit him for you_ (for he was bigger than Andrew—or stronger, anyway—and it felt right to offer). But Andrew said it’d only make it worse, Peter being bigger than both of them, with friends who were bigger still...and Thomas had conceded the point. 

“You should tell her that,” Mum said, looking not nearly concerned enough. 

“She won’t believe me…” Thomas said, dejected. “She thinks I’m too little to know anything…”

Mum handed him a knife. “Well, maybe she’ll find out for herself.” 

Maybe. Thomas hoped so: he didn’t often get on with Maggie, but it was beneath her to go soft on that sort of person...the sort that enjoyed hurting things that were smaller than him...

“I know they didn’t have to do it,” he murmured.

“Do what, lovey?”

“Mr. Carrick,” Thomas said, not willing to address the thing head-on for a third time. “I _know_ he didn’t.”

Mum cut the eye off a potato before answering. 

“Maybe you’re right.”

“I know I am,” Thomas said. 

He took the first carrot—clumsily peeled by Maggie—and turned it on the cutting board until it sat just right. 

“Big things take care of little things,” he said, “because if they don’t...then the little things don’t get big, and there’s nothing at all.”

She didn’t answer, though that wasn’t unusual. Sometimes silence felt more comfortable, especially when the hands were occupied with something else. Only when Thomas had finished cutting the carrots into even circles, carrying the cutting board back to the counter-top, did she stop him with a hand on his shoulder. It brushed through his hair, tidying something he’d otherwise not have noticed. 

“You’re a clever, clever boy…” she murmured before planting a kiss to the top of his head. 

* * *

_April 5, 1922_

_(cont'd)_

_She’s sorry for her sins, which—it pains me to say—hasn’t been enough for most of our old friends. The poor thing’s been shut up in the house most days, neglected by our own neighbors...but of course they’ll rush into church on Sunday!_

_But you know we were taught better, Thomas, and I hope you will consider what I’m asking. Peter is being such a dear, letting her stay, but the fact is we really can’t afford to keep her at home, with four little ones. I’m terrified, thinking where else she might be forced to stay, if she can’t find a position._

_I enclosed a picture of Amy—we just couldn’t get her to take her fists out of her mouth. Peter suggested putting something nasty on them, but I can’t bear the thought!_

_I hope you are well. Do you know, Henry asked about you? He was looking at the pictures on the mantel, and he wanted to know who the boy who looked like him was! It was the picture we had taken before I was married. Mum hated it, always said she looked like a ghost, but I’m glad we took it before she went._

_I do talk to Peter about you. I know you don’t believe that I do, but it’s the truth all the same._

_Someday, when they’re all older, I think he’ll come ‘round. You’ll like them better then, anyway, I should think._

_Please do give the matter of Phyllis some consideration. You can send for her from this address, if there’s space for her at Downton. It would be such a kindness, and I know how fond you are of someone in need of a little extra care._

_Your sister,_

_Margaret Hiller_

Thomas had burned the first page of the letter almost as soon as he’d read it. He could remember the sordid details of a sorry tale without keeping the evidence tucked up in his room. Besides, he didn’t need proof of Miss Baxter’s crimes—that was easily found out by anyone wanting to look. 

In truth, he wanted to burn the second page more than the first, for its posturing and tepid concession that _Margaret Hiller_ was—after all—his sister. But though the words angered him, made him feel more lonely and cast aside than ever, there was something else in them, something Maggie surely hadn’t meant: an admission that he was permanent, whether they liked it or not. 

He wasn’t about to burn that. 

As for the picture...Thomas wished it stirred something in him, but all he could manage was a vague, indistinct warmth—the kind that was bolstered by neither familiarity nor any particular fondness. 

Amy Hiller was a baby with a charming habit of chewing on her own hands...a charming habit _most_ babies shared. Including children he was permitted to dote on—trusted more by his employer than by his own sister. 

And why should little Amy—sweet as she undoubtedly was—matter more to him than Miss Sybbie or Master George, who knew him and called him by name? 

Still, he kept the picture. It wasn’t as unpleasant as it had once been, thinking of his nieces and nephews. He supposed he was getting used to being a vestigial piece of the family puzzle. 

Then Miss Baxter had caught him looking at it (she was certainly talented at spying on _him_ ). 

“She sends you pictures, then?” she asked, indifferent to his haste in putting the photograph back in his pocket. 

“Does that surprise you?” he snapped, though her tone had been mild. 

“No.” He regretted pressing the matter, for there was no conviction in her answer. She noticed it too, for she tried on a brighter face before continuing: 

“They’re all lovely children.”

“Are they?” He returned to the silver he’d been neglecting, polishing harder than ever. “I wouldn’t know.”

He tried to imagine the silence meant anything besides her pitying him, but it wasn’t any use.

“Maggie said you don’t get on with Mr. Hiller.”

He looked at her with a humorless smile. _“Mr. Hiller_ doesn’t get on with _me.”_

She fixed him with a stare a shade harsher than the one before it. “That seems to be a common problem for you.”

His fingers flexed into a fist under the table. “Does it, Miss Baxter?” 

As if she knew anything about it. Maybe it was his own fault the people at Downton didn’t care for him—hadn’t he admitted as much to her? 

But Mr. Hiller despised him for reasons he’d never admit to—not out of any concern for Thomas’s welfare, but for his wife’s...and his own, if anyone got the full story. 

The broken arm Peter had given Andrew after catching them had never completely recovered, and neither had Andrew. He’d disappeared soon as he was able, farther and faster than Thomas had dared. No one knew if he was better for it, least of all Thomas. 

A common problem, indeed. 

* * *

**1924**

If one more person told him to have a rest before unceremoniously shoving half a dozen things at him...Thomas closed his eyes upon reaching the right floor, one hand leaning against the wall to keep the dizziness from toppling him over. 

He was such a fool. 

The children were chattering excitedly just down the hall—coming closer, it sounded—and Thomas opened his eyes with a sigh. He straightened, wincing at the pounding in his head, the persistent heat on his brow. 

He wouldn’t sleep, he knew that already...but if he could lie down for a minute or two…

_And what, not be able to get back up again?_

“A picnic!” Miss Sybbie’s voice rang out. “A picnic! Mr. Barrow!”

She veered from her original path, hastening over to him in an eager skip. 

“That’s exciting…” he managed, smiling as best he could. 

She stopped just in front of him, looking up with wide, frightened eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

Thomas blinked, tugging at his collar. 

“Nothing’s wrong,” he mumbled. “I’m perfectly—oh!”

She’d squeezed him tight around the waist—which hurt more than helped, at least at the start. Still, he was gentle in prying her off of him, letting her hands drift into his. They were cooler than his, which wasn’t the usual way of things. 

“Let me see,” she said, tugging at his arms and prompting him to crouch down so they were closer to level with one another. A part of him was sure he shouldn’t indulge her, that he’d only shock and upset her with his illness...another part knew he was too late in preventing that, and he’d be just as likely to spook her more by pulling away now. 

“Miss Sybbie…I’m perfectly fine.” Which did nothing to soften the doubt and concern on her face. “I’m just tired, that’s all it is.”

He bounced her hands in his own, but she was much too clever to fall for that.

“Why aren’t you sleeping?” she demanded, stepping closer. 

“I’ve been having bad dreams, I suppose.”

Which got him a hug ‘round the neck—this one brought tears to his eyes for an entirely different reason—and a promise that she’d lend him Missy, her toy kitten.

“She makes all the bad dreams go away,” she explained. 

Thomas brushed her hair behind her ears. “But what about _your_ bad dreams, Miss Sybbie?”

This was a puzzle...she considered the matter with a pensive brow before saying: “I _think_ I can find something else, Mr. Barrow, so that’ll be all right!”

“Miss Sybbie!” Nanny called from the end of the hall Sybbie was meant to be waiting in. 

“A picnic!” She leaped on her toes, exuberant again. She half turned to follow Nanny before turning to him with a finger out. “Not for you! You go to sleep, all right?”

Thomas winced as he straightened to full height, but his smile withstood it. “Right now?”

She nodded fiercely. “Right now!”

Within the hour, rain pattered on the roof as Thomas gathered up the kit he’d been given when he’d left the dim, musty office in London. The storm would spoil their picnic, but the drum of raindrops on the window gave his decision a sense of weight and resonance. A good rain was the perfect time to be decided on a course of action. 

Miss Baxter _might_ help, after all, in the way she promised. Even after he’d done his best to spend her goodwill. She might still help, if he plucked up the courage to ask without pretense. 

And with any luck, the next time the children had a picnic, he’d been there to keep the clouds away, rain or not. 

* * *

**1925**

Something had caused an exodus from the servants’ hall; Thomas felt rather like a fish swimming upstream as he made his way to the entrance. A maid scurried past with an apron full of broken porcelain—a single clue as to the cause of the commotion.

The new scullery maid—Willa—sat at the far end of the table, sobbing and being comforted by Mrs. Hughes. Daisy was wiping the floor with a panicked urgency Thomas hadn’t seen in above ten years. Mr. Carson looked as if he were trying to catch everyone in the same glare.

“What’s all this?” Thomas asked, lingering in the doorway. 

Mr. Carson stormed past him, red faced, without a word. Thomas looked quizzically at Daisy, who was straightening to full height. She hurried past him towards the kitchen, though she gave Thomas a glance that said he should follow. 

“It’s awful...Miss Marigold bumped into Willa, and she never sets the teapot’s lid right, so it spilled over. Not much, but enough for her to drop it all, and now it’s turned into bedlam.” Daisy stopped to let one of the maids hurry past, a bowl of water in hand. 

“And Mr. Carson, biting that girl’s head off,” she continued breathlessly, “after she’d already been scared out of her wits…”

Thomas shrugged. “Well, he did the same to you when you started, so there’s no surprise—”

“—no, I mean Miss Marigold.” Daisy stopped in her tracks, and it took Thomas a moment to realize she’d followed his lead. 

_“What?”_

“The worst of it is, it weren’t _her_ fault…” Daisy said. “Well, it weren’t really _any_ of their faults, it just happened...but Master George were the one chasing her...and then Mr. Carson started in on her like she’d made to do it on purpose.”

Thomas breathed in sharp through his nose, his teeth worrying the inside of his cheek. 

“You know _why,_ don’t you?” 

Daisy didn’t respond, and Thomas bit back the answer to his own question. She knew—they all knew. But he’d be the one punished for saying it aloud. 

Mr. Carson would never scold Lady Mary’s son—and the heir of Downton to boot. But he couldn’t bear not to box someone’s ears for an accident that might’ve happened to anyone...so the toddling ward became the whipping boy...the natural consequence of an unfettered pomposity that made Carson betray his own sort. 

Master George’s eyes were redder than usual, but he was sitting atop the kitchen counter with a placid smile, eating a strawberry. He waved at Thomas, his other hand reaching into the bowl beside him. 

“Come share with me, Mr. Barrow!” he called, holding out a strawberry to him. It dulled the bite of Thomas’s anger, seeing that—after all—it wasn’t Master George’s insistence that the world spun so unjustly in his favor. It hadn’t spoiled him yet, either. 

Perhaps it _wouldn’t,_ Thomas thought, thinking of the few but precious examples of privilege put to a worthy use. If anyone could manage it...

“I have...ten,” George said, counting up the remaining berries in the bowl. “So how many do you get?”

Sharing and sums were one and the same the boy’s mind...which Thomas supposed wasn’t the worst way to get on in the world. 

“Well, two into ten is five, Master George,” he said. “So if you count up five, we’ll have the same.”

And he did, the clever lad, piling them into Thomas’s hands and beaming at the result. 

“—probably hiding somewhere...my niece did the same thing, when she was a girl,” he heard Mrs. Patmore say to Mrs. Hughes. “She’ll come out when she’s ready, and it’ll be like nothing ever happened.”

Thomas turned towards them, the warmth in his chest fading as he caught Mrs. Hughes’s look of concern. 

“I don’t know—a child that small could find herself anywhere, especially in such a big house,” she said. “She could get lost or stuck somewhere...anyway, Nanny’ll be taking them up soon, and it’s more than my life’s worth to tell Lady Edith the child’s gone missing again.”

Thomas straightened, swallowing back a fear he couldn’t quite place before speaking. 

“I think I know where she might be.”

They turned to him, in surprise at first (did they ever tire of it?)—but Mrs. Hughes’s eyes softened as she took in his handful of strawberries, George leaning comfortably into his arm. 

“Well, if anyone could guess, it’d be you, Mr. Barrow…”

That was praise enough, for now. After extracting an easy promise from George that he’d watch over his strawberries until he returned, Thomas set off in search of Miss Marigold. 

The door to the stairwell was heavy for a child of her size, but she had a dangerous habit of slipping through whatever crack she could manage, so that was no barrier. She’d remember what sat behind those doors—though she usually made for the main staircase in times of distress. 

In a pinch, Thomas was sure she’d make do the servants’ stairs. 

Sure enough, she was settled on the second flight of stairs, the third step from the landing, tucked up against the wall, hands wrapped about her knees. She clasped her legs tighter at Thomas’s approach, though he was encouraged by the fact that she hadn’t curled up into a ball, as she sometimes did with Nanny. He smiled at her, walking as light as he could coming up the stairs. 

“‘ _Halfway down the stairs is a stair where I sit_ ’” he quoted, waiting for her smile before settling down next to her. “‘ _There isn’t any other stair quite like it’_...I can’t remember what’s next, do you know? I’ll bet you do.”

Of course, she did—Marigold made Nanny read Milne’s poem over and over again, as if it were a philosophy of life she’d sworn to memorize. Though she looked down at her shoes, her smile only grew as she answered, the pauses and lilts just as Nanny read them to her:

“‘ _I’m not at the bottom...I’m not at the top...so this is the stair. Where. I always...Stop._ ’”

“And you do, don’t you?” Thomas laughed. Marigold ducked her head, looking pleased as could be...and God, Carson really was a fool, not to realize who she was...Thomas had seen the same look on Lady Edith’s face during half a dozen servants’ balls. 

_He’d probably dislike her all the more for it,_ Thomas thought darkly, not _quite_ knowing if it were true, but feeling his doubt was condemnation enough. 

“What’re doing out here by yourself?” he asked, knocking his arm softly into her own. She answered by burying her face against his side, arms wrapping around him. 

“Oh, now…” Thomas maneuvered so his arm was free to hug her tighter. “Mr. Carson’s only fussing. He didn’t mean anything by it...and everything’s all cleaned up, so there’s no harm done.”

This made Marigold start to cry, but Thomas supposed she had to do that, before it was all over. A good cry, with someone who cared...that’d mend it. 

“I was scared,” she sobbed. “And it was so loud and I wanted to be in the quiet…”

“Of course you did,” Thomas murmured, his hand squeezing Marigold’s. It was so tiny...how had Carson managed to bellow at her, knowing it’d frighten her so? 

Perhaps he’d just forgotten how it felt to be so small in the world. 

He gave her another minute, before reluctantly remembering that he’d been sent both to find Marigold _and_ bring her back.

“Do you know, Master George is having strawberries in the kitchens?” he said, grinning at the light that entered her eyes. “I’ll bet Mrs. Patmore’d fetch you some as well, if you’ve a mind to go back downstairs.”

She looked out at the staircase, her lower lip still trembling. Thomas tapped her on the chin—soft, so she’d look up at him—just as his mother had done with him. 

He’d not tried it on any of the children before now, perhaps because he was frightened of what it meant. That pride and directness she’d taught him—how often had he credited (or blamed) it for his hardness, his bitterness? His inability to fit into the world because the world saw a lifted chin as a threat?

But Marigold looked at him with a kind of awe at the reminder, a smile growing on her face. 

“There, now…” Thomas whispered, wiping the last of her tears. 

And when she looked back at the stairwell—standing with his help—she looked straight ahead. 

“I don’t _like_ when people yell, Mr. Barrow,” she declared, just as they reached the bottom (as fervently as she’d declared anything)

“Oh, I don’t either, Miss Marigold.” Thomas held the door open for her, and she waited for him with an outstretched hand on the other side of the doorway. “But Mr. Carson shouts at everyone, you know. Especially me. Would you believe that?”

She nodded, laughing loudly at Thomas’s feigned look of dismay. 

“Now, Miss Marigold, that’s not very nice…”

She tapped his chin while they ate strawberries—her feet swinging back and forth as she sat contentedly on the counter-top—and Thomas realized what he’d forgotten about the gesture. .

Such reminders had been a gift from his mother, perhaps the only one she’d known how to give. And it had made him strong, for a time. Brave and bold and all the rest. Other things had poisoned him, made him afraid and brittle and angry at all the world. 

But he’d known something different—had been taught something different, from the person who knew him best. 

And might he learn it again, before it was all over? 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Next up: some more of Thomas's mum, a LOT more Richard Ellis, and Thomas finding his own place in the world...


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for reading and supporting this story! I hope you enjoy the closing part--it was super satisfying to write, and I hope it's just as satisfying a conclusion for you all!
> 
> Warnings for this chapter include some allusions to depression and your garden variety homophobia, as well as some discussions of terminal illnesses and death. (But I promise it's largely happy!)

**1907**

Mum’s room—for it was her room, more and more as time went on, and his father avoided going to bed even as she struggled to get out of it—was the only place in the house Thomas could still breathe easy. Even then, that was only if he didn’t think on what was to come, what he was bound to lose before he was anything near ready to face it. 

The hollow of her cheeks deepened all the time, the skin turning sallow. But she still did her hair up each morning—even as it thinned and lost much of its shine—humming the same as she always had. Something inside her remained impervious to decay—or the fear it brought on—and it comforted Thomas. 

Most people pretended to be brave, but she was the only person he’d met who really seemed to be. 

He’d never be as brave as her, not by half...even now, he spent most of his time shut up in her room, frantic to find a job he didn’t want, just to get away before things got worse between him and his father.

He felt selfish for doing it, but Mum had insisted, had looked through the paper with him for postings. It was time he made his own start; he was ready. 

Meanwhile, _Margaret_ was making a start of her own, with Mr. Peter Hiller. They’d be married by the end of spring, and Thomas wasn’t sure he could bear it. He’d had a sense, always, that when it came down to it, his sister would come down on one side of a line, and he’d come down on another. 

Peter Hiller was the line. Or Andrew Hiller—still laid up with a broken arm and a case of hysterics. Both families keeping quiet for the sake of their own interest, even as both households began to boil over with the knowledge they couldn’t ignore any longer. 

They each housed an unapologetic invert. What better way to seal the secret than through marriage? 

Thomas had begged Maggie to reconsider in light of Peter’s actions, but the cruelty his sister wouldn’t have borne towards anyone else was admissible if directed at the likes of him. 

“He was spooked, and you shouldn’t have been there anyway!” she said, adding that he and Andrew would both be “just fine” and Peter had promised to “act as if it never happened.”

The first promise to Maggie he’d break—Thomas could feel nothing but hatred in Peter’s glares over tea. His father kept looking between them, as if he half expected Peter to give Thomas another walloping. If Maggie noticed—and Thomas wondered if she noticed anything at all, really—she certainly didn’t seem to care. 

He excused himself early, escaping to Mum’s room before he was swallowed up in how painfully he _didn’t belong_ at his own kitchen table. 

He didn’t tell her that, of course, instead letting her questions prompt a litany of complaints—everything from Peter Hiller’s suit to the quality of his conversation. 

“He’s drier than that cake Maggie tried to make for tea,” Thomas laughed, leaning back on his hands as he sat on the edge of her bed. “I’m still choking it down.” 

Mum folded her hands across her lap, looking at him through narrow eyes. “Why do you talk that way?”

“What way?”

“Don’t _‘what way?’_ me.” She winced as she propped herself higher against her bedframe. “You know exactly what you’re doing, being so sour.”

She struggled with adjusting the pillow against her back, and Thomas jumped up to help her. 

“I don’t want my sister marrying the village dullard, is that so wrong?” he said, the laugh in his voice timid and unconvincing. She caught his eye—and illness had done nothing to dull how sharp her gaze could be. 

“I see...so this has nothing to do with how he hurt you and Andrew?”

Thomas blinked. 

“Of course not,” he said bitterly. “Why would it matter to me that he hates me over something that weren’t his business?” 

She almost smiled, patting the place beside her on the bed. 

“Darling, no one is ever going to hate you for something that’s their business,” she remarked as he settled next to her. “People never hate things they have stock in.”

She took his hand in both of her own—they were thinner, still cold—looking suddenly solemn. 

“You look better, today,” Thomas said finally. Wishful thinking at its finest...

She raised an eyebrow. “You’re a terrible liar.”

“I’m not lying,” he insisted, squeezing her hand. “I wouldn’t lie.”

This seemed to make her sadder, which made Thomas’s stomach twist, but the sadness quickly faded into a determination. 

“Now,” she said with a sigh that buttoned up her melancholy. “Now that I’m laid up, you have to make sure things run the way they’re supposed to. Get the Hendersons their eggs, and ask little Harry to come do the yard every so often—Mr. Sorrel’s been drinking again, so they’ll need the money...your father doesn’t think of it, so you have to think of it for him.”

The Barrows kept an eye on the people who needed it. That’s what people said...but it had really only ever been Elizabeth Finch who kept an eye on anything (and, as she so often often pointed out, she wasn’t _properly_ a Barrow at all). 

Now it was supposed to be him...and Thomas didn’t know if he was _properly_ anything. 

“But I’m not staying—”

“—but you’ll stay close,” she said, a tremor in her voice that suggested she was doing some wishful thinking of her own. She swallowed it back, tightening her grip on Thomas’s hand. “For a time, anyway. Just on your half-days, lovey, or you can send a note.”

“I can try…” Thomas said, though privately he didn’t think it would do much good. He had no ownership over this house, this village...none at all. He’d leave without anyone being the wiser, off to a place where he didn’t suppose things would be much different. 

“You’re angry with me,” she said, in the face of his silence. “For going.”

She lifted a hand to stop his protest. “Don’t lie, I know you are. I hated my own mother for it, and I wasn’t—well, I didn’t need her half as much as you still need yours.”

Thomas ducked his head, blinking away the tears in his eyes. So she knew as well as he did, then, that their chipper job searches were a kind of playacting. That without her, he’d have nothing in this world. 

“If it makes you feel better, I’m angry with myself about it,” she said. “Laura Sailor is ninety _—ninety,_ and still complaining of the same cold she’s always had—and I couldn’t manage half that. I never would have thought.” 

Thomas took a deep breath—in through the nose first, then out the same way. 

“It’s not your fault,” he said, feeling there wasn’t enough sincerity in the world to say it in just the way he meant it to be heard. 

“You’re sweet to say so when I know you’re wondering, every day,” she said, looking into her lap before taking a breath of her own. 

“Anyway: you’ll be angry, but you’ll forgive me,” she said, voice steadier. “Then someday, just as you’re settling, it’ll be time for someone to be angry with you.” 

Thomas smiled humorlessly. “The milkman, three days later, I expect.”

She pulled the hand on top of his away sharply, her other hand still interlocked with his. 

“Don’t say such ugly things,” she said, steel in her voice. “Don’t you dare. This whole wide world, and you such a clever boy? Don’t make yourself small for their sake. Don’t you do it.” 

The words were cutting, but Thomas felt as if they’d jabbed at someone who wasn’t quite him, but pretended to be—they didn’t sting, only made him alert, attuned to what was really his. 

“I won’t,” he said, though he hardly knew what she meant or how he could stop it from happening. 

He wasn’t as brave as she was, and that was the truth of it.

She leaned back, the fierceness in her eyes shining still bright. “That’s right, you won’t. You’re _my_ son.” 

* * *

_January 23, 1929_

_Margaret,_

_I am sorry to say that I won’t have the time off on such short notice. If our father asks where I am, you can certainly hand him my congratulations. Seventy years is a feat, I’ll not deny it. I doubt he’ll ask—a man of his age isn’t given to surprises._

_I had news of Henry the other day—the uncle of a friend of mine owns the shop he’s working at in London (you neglected to send me the name in your last letter, else I’d have known it from the start). He’ll do well to keep in with the Ellises—they’ve connections all over. My acquaintance—a Mr. Richard Ellis—works in Buckingham Palace!_

_Would you believe it? That they should run into each other, in a place as wide as London...Mr. Ellis thought he was seeing things at first glance! You’ve not exaggerated, he says: we look something alike. But of course, they sorted it out between themselves...you’ll be pleased to know that Mr. Ellis says Henry is a fine, well-spoken young man. He’ll be a credit to his family._

_I don’t need to tell you to send him as many letters as you can. I may send a few myself. It’s a lonely time in life for a young man out on his own for the first time. I’ll be visiting London in a few months, and I hope to see him while I’m there._

_The family goes to London less often than they did, but I have reasons beyond work to find myself there. If you are ever planning a visit at the same time as I am, perhaps we can arrange a meeting then. I won’t have much time to spare, but I’d like to see you, if it’s still—as you put it—convenient._

_Your brother,_

_Thomas Barrow_

Though he didn’t say it to Margaret, the coincidences didn’t stop at Richard bumping into Henry. She’d finally up and condescended to invite him back home on the same day Richard had invited him to York for a “just-past” Christmas dinner at his parents’ house (a hallmark occasion, ever since he’d started in service).

January 25—Thomas’s new favorite day. The only thing better than telling Margaret _‘no_ ’ had been ringing Richard up to tell him about it. 

If Richard Ellis were a man who’d taken less care to understand the situation, he might have gently suggested Thomas rearrange the plans they’d made together, in favor of Thomas reuniting with his family. It would have been a selfless, noble gesture...and one that sent Thomas into a house where he knew, deep down, he still wasn’t welcome. 

But Richard Ellis’s kindness was shrewd and intuitive, and instead he lent his signature levity to the occasion: 

“She posted the letter on the _nineteenth,_ so that’ll tell you who she sent it for…” he said over the phone. “There’s Christian charity for you…”

For this and so many other reasons, Thomas had vowed to keep Richard close for as long as he possibly could.

He’d visited Richard’s childhood home in York once before, but that had been a quiet tea with Mr. and Mrs. Ellis, who asked Thomas questions in a way he’d always secretly wanted to be asked—as if he were a man come courting. 

It would be much the same with the rest of the family there, Richard promised. 

“Only louder.”

He’d not been wrong, on any count. His older brother—David—said he’d known from the start when Dick’d gone off about a butler he’d met at Downton, “that we’d be meeting him sooner or later.” Broad smile and a firm handshake. 

“And he chose later, _as usual,”_ Annie—his sister—said, tossing a teasing look in Richard’s direction. 

“I never do anything until I’m sure,” Richard said with a smile. Which would have had Thomas walking on air regardless, but Annie lifted him still higher by telling him a low tone:

“I live in London and I talked to him first after he got back...he was sure of things right off, Mr. Barrow, don’t let him pretend otherwise.” 

As for the noise Richard had promised, it came with a delightful force: David and Martha Ellis had three children; Chester and Annie Young had five. The house could hardly contain them, though it tried its best, sending their laughter ringing through the house, bouncing jovially off the walls and forcing the adults to laugh louder themselves. 

Thomas had spent so much time in massive, echoing estates—carefully and dispassionately ordered—that he’d forgotten what a real home looked like. A place that was lived in all the way to the corners. A place where the man he loved had grown up, a place where he could stand with open hands and be told that what he represented was good and had been hoped for. 

Even in his wildest dreams, a visit back home could never have provided Thomas with half of what he’d been given here.

“You’re not sorry you came, then?” Richard handed Thomas a glass of wine as they sat back on the settee. He leaned into his side and let their knees come together. They could do that, here, without fear. So long as they considered the younger children...and the beauty of young children was how easily they believed the world behaved exactly as they already understood it. Suspicion wasn’t in their nature.

“I never thought I _would_ be sorry.”

“Well, I’m glad I’ve earned some faith.”

He was teasing, but Thomas knew there was truth in his understatement, that Richard would never fully realize what it meant, to have found someone he could trust as much as he loved. How could he, with a family like his? He’d been loved and trusted his whole life—he could have no sense of how impossible it seemed that those things could be found once they were lost. 

“I’d say you’ve earned more than _that,”_ Thomas said. 

Perhaps the wine and warm feelings had made the words more sultry than he’d meant, for Richard cocked his head to the side, the smile on his face one Thomas recognized well. 

“Oh?” he murmured—Thomas couldn’t say he was sorry for the way Richard leaned in, the way his voice deepened. “And what would that—”

“—Uncle Dickie!”

They pulled apart, turning to Louise—Annie’s second youngest daughter. She was about Miss Marigold’s age, Thomas guessed—though perhaps he only thought so because she braided her hair the same way, straight down the middle of her back. 

“Yes, love?” Richard said, though Louise didn’t need much invitation to cling to his side. She held her wrist as if it were injured, though it was the silver bracelet on it that appeared to be broken—or at least, the clasp had come undone, which came to much the same thing in the eyes of a little girl wearing her mother’s jewelry for a special occasion 

“Fix it, please!” she said, a muted sob in her voice. Richard doubled the bracelet over on her wrist before redoing the clasp. He urged her not to tug on it, else it’d happen again...“or worse,” he warned, biting back a grin at Louise’s wide eyes.

“But I wasn’t tugging, honest!” she said, sidling closer to him, playing with her bracelet in a way that _just_ stopped short of tugging. Richard took her hand in his, negating the temptation. She spun under his arm before plopping down next to him. 

“What are you doing?” she asked, looking from Richard to Thomas with the impatient curiosity of a child who thought any hour not spent in energetic exploration was a waste. 

Richard swung her arm in the air. 

“Mr. Barrow and I are planning a trip...but _where_ to?”

He furrowed his brow in mock puzzlement, and Louise hopped in her seat eagerly. 

“The ocean!” she exclaimed. 

Richard grinned. “But what would we bring?”

This was clearly a game of some sort, though Thomas—who because of George and Sybbie knew more about children’s games than he had any right to—had never heard of _this_ one. Perhaps the Ellises had made it up...Thomas could easily see Richard deciding the games played in the schoolyard didn’t suit…

He smiled to himself as he watched Richard and Louise bat suggestions off of each other. 

“A boat! Go!”

“A pair of binoculars to see the whales and such. Go!”

“A little boat if the big boat sinks! Go!”

Only this time, Louise pointed to Thomas, who still wasn’t _entirely_ sure he knew what game was being played. 

“It’s your turn, Mr. Barrow,” Richard said, squeezing his knee. “What would you bring to the ocean?”

“...a bucket in case you’re ill?”

Louise thought this was terribly funny—she lay back in her seat with a delighted screech before shooting up suddenly, pointing at Thomas again. 

“Now say Go!”

“Go?”

Richard grinned. “A map of the stars, for navigating. Go!” 

“A lot of food unless you _really_ like fish! Go!”

But when Louise swung her arm to point to Thomas again, her bracelet flew off, landing at Thomas’s feet

“Can you fix it, Mr. Barrow?” she asked him, when he tried to hand it off to her. And Thomas knew an offer of friendship from a child when he saw one...

“It goes in that one,” Louise said, offering her help as Thomas fumbled with the clasp, which refused to quite shut properly. 

“Thank you, Louise…”

She sat down next to Thomas after he’d fitted it back on her wrist, nodding at Richard’s warning to _be_ _careful with it, now…_

“Louise,” he said, after she assured him that she _was_ being careful. “Don’t you think it’d be nice if Mr. Barrow came by more often?”

She beamed. “Even in London?”

Richard’s hand moved from Thomas’s knee to clasp one of his hands briefly. 

“Even in London.”

* * *

Henry Hiller talked too fast, but the things he said were bright and energetic, his eyes wide and eager. He wanted so much from the world, and he was willing to work for it. 

Thomas didn’t think he’d ever found that corner of youth—that place where the world was wide and there was possibility after possibility, with only the tiniest bit of fear. If he’d wanted to know what it would have looked like, he only had to study Henry’s face, so similar to his own. 

“I kept on them so often about meeting you,” he said, leaning over his tea. “And then Dad finally told me the reason you’d stayed away. About his brother and all.” 

And that, Thomas hadn’t expected. He sat back, tapping the arm of his chair.

“Did he?” he said with a sigh. “Thought he’d want to keep it a secret…”

“Because he’s ashamed of driving his own brother away, too?” Henry said, with a sincerity that bowled Thomas over. 

“You’ll forgive me for saying so, but I doubt that,” he murmured, looking into his cup. 

“And why wouldn’t you?” Henry said, before adding that he did think, after all, that his father carried some guilt over the incident. 

“The thing is, Uncle Thomas, I think they’re both afraid to be sorry for it,” he explained. “They’re good to most people, most of the time. But they won’t be sorry for this time they were in the wrong, and that’s made them small.”

Astute, for such a young man. Thomas smiled at him. 

“It takes some people a long time to work that out…”

“Don’t they feel it, though?” Henry said. “I do—all tight and twisted and awful about myself.”

Which about summed it up...Thomas winced inwardly at the description, at the things he could tell his nephew that might lower his estimation of him a great deal. 

“Some people get used to being small,” he said. “But I’m glad you’re not the sort.”

Henry lifted his chin. “No, I don’t think I am.” 

* * *

**1935**

Some of the Ellis nieces and nephews called him “Mr. Barrow,” and some called him “Thomas,” after the slip or two Richard made in their company. 

Thomas didn’t mind what they called him, so long as they always said it fondly. 

Richard helped move Annie back to York after Mr. Ellis died. Two years later, when Mrs. Ellis died, Richard moved back himself. 

“All roads lead to York,” he said, fixing Thomas with that searching, eager, exasperating, _wonderful_ look that told Thomas he was wanted. 

“I’ll jump when I’m ready and not before,” he always said, each time feeling himself closer to the edge, a thrill in his stomach as he contemplated what it would mean, to cut himself loose and face what came. 

Richard never made him feel badly for taking his time. 

“It’s a delicate business,” he said, never explaining what he meant. A thousand things, Thomas guessed. 

What mattered was that he understood, that he let Thomas exist as he must for the time being. He asked about “the little ones upstairs” with the same interest as Thomas asked about Louise or any of the Ellis children. He came to tea at Henry’s flat in London, when he could take the time, always remembering to ask after the girl Henry was seeing (he even remembered her name—Ruby Bedford—when Thomas forgot). 

They were growing together, unhurried and side-by-side, and in the process, Thomas felt the rest of the world drawing closer to him.

He’d jump, one day. When he was good and ready.

In the meantime—and for the first time in his life—he had an enviable view. 

* * *

**1937**

William Thomas Hiller was the first baby in his own family Thomas had ever been invited to meet, and he stayed tickled all through the month’s wait before he could secure the time off to take advantage of the invitation. 

Most of the old guard at Downton had dropped off, so the new maids only thought he was terribly sweet for keeping the photograph on his desk—the novelty of Thomas Barrow’s softness had worn off downstairs, and with it, Thomas’s fear of that softness getting out. 

If anything, the opposite fear plagued him, as he grew closer in age to most every butler he’d ever known (and usually despised). He wasn’t fixing to be another Terrible Old Man, frightening everything he saw just because he could. It was his final act of defiance towards men who were long dead, that these days Thomas Barrow was mostly kind and usually happy. 

And if he of all people could manage it, they must not have been trying very hard…(how Thomas would have liked to tell old Mr. Carson _that…_ )

Ruby held him tight on the front stoop before ushering him in. She talked as Henry did—on and on, at a breakneck pace—about the mess, about the cake she’d made, about how terribly excited they both were that he’d found the time...then Henry was hurrying over to shake his hand vigorously

He loved them both, more than he could ever make them understand. And little William of course...who Ruby presented in her arms with such pride, his fat fists waving in the air as he looked about the room with eyes that were just beginning to grasp what they were seeing. 

“I spent the first week so afraid of dropping him,” Henry said as Ruby handed the baby off to him. 

“Well that’s a silly thing to be afraid of if I ever heard one…” Thomas laughed, at which Henry protested that it was only because he’d never loved anything so much. 

“That’s Uncle Thomas,” he cooed, holding William so he could see the newcomer before handing him over. “He’s gotten less fussy since the rest of them were over to visit...I wish you could have been there.” 

The poor boy had every right to want his family all together...but Thomas knew he couldn’t be sorry to have missed a room full of strangers. 

“You know, Henry, I’ve learned some things are for the best as they are.” He beamed as William looked up at him. “Oh, _hello!”_

* * *

**1939**

He’d just about made his mind up to jump when the war started and the world stopped. 

Master George and Henry both went to war, along with too many of the Ellis brood. Ruby ignored the evacuation posters hung about London and resolved to keep her children close—there were two of them, now: William and baby Doris. Thomas didn’t blame her in the slightest; he’d have done the same, and he told her so. 

Many parents felt differently, and Thomas’s plans stalled entirely when Miss Sybbie begged his help with a mandate from the Ministry of Health. 

“I know you've handed in your notice, Mr. Barrow, but I can’t think how we’ll manage it otherwise,” she rambled, before explaining that the estate was being commandeered as a nursery, for the youngest London evacuees.

“But you know all about it, don’t you? It’s not so very different from what you did last time, really...nurses and beds and all that…”

Bright-eyed and jumping to be useful—just as her mother had been. As _he’d_ been, really, though he’d done his best to hide it. Both of them spending their days proving they could do more than what had always been asked of them. 

He’d been suited for it, keeping things running so that everyone got what they needed. It was wasted on Downton in the day-to-day—who had ever _needed_ wine decanted or a table set to perfection?—but it was _something._

This would be something else, something closer to the work that proved him capable and necessary to people of the world. Only this time, it’d be little ones instead of cursing, card-playing lieutenants...

And as Richard said when Thomas told him of Miss Sybbie’s pleading, “what’ll you do in York that suits you more than that?” 

* * *

**1945**

George would be coming home, as safe and sound as could be expected; Henry would not. The joy of the former did nothing to soften the anguish of the latter, though Thomas hadn’t expected it to. He was—however—relieved to find that the anguish of the latter did nothing to mar the joy of the former. 

Margaret and Peter Hiller said nothing to him before Henry’s service, though Margaret hesitated at the back of the church as they filed out.

She didn’t say hello, and she certainly didn’t say she was sorry they shared no memories of her son. For a moment, Thomas thought she wouldn’t say anything at all, only fix him with a blazing stare that told him nothing. 

“He looked so like you,” she finally murmured.

“Must’ve had you spooked.” Thomas didn’t take much care in masking the bitterness in his voice. 

“I’m sorry for what fate’s handed you; I am.” Said the woman whose eldest son had been cut down in his prime…

 _“Fate_ didn’t hand me anything,” he said, voice hushed so it wouldn’t ring with the anger her pity provoked. 

If he could imagine she cared, that his words could touch her all, he’d tell her: about the paths in life he’d chosen and the paths other people had chosen for him—how both had stifled him for years on years, and he’d thought once or twice that he’d never breath free of them. How he’d been wrong, how there were better paths to choose and others who’d choose _him_ as a walking partner. How no one—and certainly not Peter Hiller—had ever loved anyone the way Richard loved him. 

_Fate_ had given him that. 

But she wouldn’t understand even if she wanted to, so he let her walk away with a shake of her head—as if to say “I’ve tried all I can,” even though she hadn’t. 

It barely even stung. 

Henry had been right—she was terribly small. 

* * *

**1946**

Thomas was jumping—really and truly, come what may—in two weeks’ time. 

George had made every head in the county turn by declaring that having Downton stay a private house was a “terrible waste.” He wanted Thomas’s help in deciding what to do, and Thomas assured him he’d always have it.

“I’ll just be York, Your Lordship,” he said gently, preempting the query in George’s eye, the question that hadn’t quite been asked: would he stay, after all? 

George nodded, looking just a bit crestfallen. For the briefest flash of ungenerosity, Thomas felt a bit like a toy that needed to be given up. 

But that wasn’t George’s way, and the feeling passed. He helped Thomas to pack his things into a car, shook his hand in both of his own, and wished that he’d be “so very happy” in his new place.

“I’m always up in York,” he said, adding that Thomas must tell him if he became a nuisance. 

“As if he’d ever be _that,”_ Richard laughed when Thomas told him the story, packing his things in the cottage’s spare room—which had to remain fully furnished and lived in, if things were to come off. 

It was onerous and silly, but they hardly minded. They knew the truth of their situation: they were lovers, had been for going on twenty years. And this was their home, on a street with neighbors who had been surveilled for years, to see if they balked at Thomas’s frequent comings and goings. 

None ever had—indeed, Thomas suspected more than a few knew what was going on already. But Richard was constitutionally approachable and affable, telling quite a different story than the ones written up in papers and whispered in hushed tones. 

People were loyal to what they knew—and the people on their street knew Richard Ellis and Thomas Barrow. 

  
Richard stopped Thomas’s sorting of his sock drawer with a kiss that left him weak in the knees—in twenty years, some things never changed. 

“We’ll be having all sorts to tea, with the friends you’ve made,” he said, running his thumb along Thomas’s cheek. “Lords and ladies and such, all remembering how you dandled them on your knee…”

He said it with such pride, as if Thomas had accomplished something by doing it, after all. That it hadn’t been _pretending_ or _instead of_ or _overstepping his place._

Even when Thomas had wondered, Richard never had. You had to give what you could, he always said. 

And he was right, of course—he was terribly clever about matters of the heart. Of the many reasons Thomas had vowed to love him with his eye on forever. 

He still didn’t know if people _got_ forever. It was a word without much meaning until you found the end of it, in which case it stopped being real. 

But if there was a forever, he knew who he’d spend it with, if given half the chance. 

He kissed Richard, giving in to Richard’s hand on his back, pressing him closer. 

“All those nice cars coming down the street,” he murmured, pulling away a few inches, a grin playing on his face.

“What _will_ the neighbors say, Mr. Barrow?” 

* * *

**1947**

Ruby Hiller’s eyes went hollow after Henry died; Thomas expected that. He visited London as often as he could, to give her a hand to hold and a pair of eyes to watch the children. He knew grief well, and how suffocating it could be. 

Even still, the light should have come back by now, surely. 

Instead, Ruby’s eyes sunk deeper in her face, and her hands shook when she poured his tea. The children’s answers to his questions about how things were grew cagey and indistinct.

Uneasy, Thomas took his concerns back to the cottage in York, where he and Richard decided on the next steps to be taken, should matters at the Hiller house continue to alarm.

The first time Ruby bit back at a question about how she was, Thomas was ready to be gentle but unflinching: 

“You can’t stay here. It’s making you ill.”

She blinked, cheeks growing still paler. “I’m _not_ ill.”

“You are,” Thomas insisted. “And you’ll not get better pretending otherwise, or going on the same way you are now.”

He looked into his lap, remembering how much he’d needed someone to tell him the very same thing. 

“I’d know,” he murmured.

“What else can I do?” she whispered, after a pause. Her voice trembled, and Thomas knew she wanted an answer that would give her a reason to say yes. 

“Come to York,” he said. “We have room at the house.”

“What, for all three of us?”

“We can make do,” he said. “And Dick lets out his parents’ place, so once you’re on your feet, we can arrange to have you there...it’s not ten minutes away from ours, so you’ll have family near you.”

He’d been ready to come back and try again, as many times as it took. But Ruby took his offer before the visit was out, her stare resolute even as she wept. 

“I think they’ll be glad of a change,” she said bravely. And that was that. 

* * *

**1948**

Little Doris Hiller was a Barrow—a _Finch_ , Thomas’s mother would have said sharply, “as those are my eyes and coloring, thank you, and I got them from my father and he from his.”

She was a _Finch,_ then, Thomas corrected himself. If ever there was one...though it went deeper than her blue eyes or thick, dark hair. She held her chin high without prompting and complained of cold hands as she grabbed for Thomas’s on the way home from school (but she wouldn’t wear gloves, not without a blizzard outside—“they make my hands _hot,_ not warm!” she insisted...which Thomas couldn’t very well argue with). 

She remembered everything and everyone—nothing made her fuss more than unaccounted for details. Sometimes, her commitment to the whole of things was petulant and inconvenient—her way of ordering facts made her clever and she knew it, making her unrelenting in a disagreement. The same commitment, however, made her fearlessly kind—no one dared leave anyone out in the neighborhood game, for Doris would notice and set it right. 

Sometimes, her view of the world came though in the simplest of things—her braids had to look just right, and only “Uncle Thomas” could meet her standards. Once the Hillers had moved into the old Ellis house, she made do with her mother’s attempts...but Thomas knew she’d clamber over to him whenever one was visiting the other—a near every day occurrence—and insist he “make them look _perfect.”_

He’d learned it for her, and she loved him for it. For _more_ than that, Thomas hoped, but sometimes the smallest things told the most about a matter:

Richard took William to the countryside and showed him the stars that you couldn’t see properly in London—or even in York, anymore (“though you could when I was your age, right from my window”... “your window is _my_ window now, isn’t it?”... “the very same”). 

Louise traveled the world and sent the most wonderful postcards—one of them mentioning a “dear friend, you’d know the sort” named Lilian. They kept it on the mantle, beaming at each other whenever it caught their eye. 

And the children who weren’t children anymore came to the cottage, filling their weeks with visits of such a varied sort that the last thing the neighbors must have puzzled over was whether the men who lived there were _indecent._ Not when the Earl of Grantham came to tea every other week, or Sybbie in the car she drove herself, even when her husband came along. Marigold, who stood so tall and spoke so passionately about politics that Thomas could hardly believe she was the same little girl who had taken a week to speak a word to him. 

Their house was filled to the corners, whatever came next. 

Just now, it was sitting on his front step, finishing Doris’s second braid before tying it off with a blue ribbon as she stared up at the purple sky.

“Do you know something, Uncle Thomas?” That was how she always started.

“You know, darling, I just might, after all this time.” How he always answered. 

“I think I like York much better than London.”

“Oh? And why’s that?” 

“Because in London, there was just my house. And here, everything feels like it’s mine.”

Thomas turned her around gently by the shoulder, surveying his completed handiwork. Doris reached up to measure the length of her bows. Just right, as usual—she grinned at him. 

“Why’d you think that is?” he asked, taking her hand in his. “That it’s all yours, here?” 

“I think...because you and Uncle Dick and Mummy and everyone we know showed us all of it. So it’s ours.”

She always gave the cleverest answers...

“I think you’re right.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!!


End file.
